Matteo Messina Denaro

Messina Denaro was reportedly detained in a private clinic in Sicily's capital, Palermo. He is alleged to be a boss of the notorious Cosa Nostra mafia. Italian ...

Gian Carlo Caselli, a judge and former prosecutor general, said that the arrest of Messina Denaro was an "exceptional... For years, Messina Denaro had been a symbol of the state's inability to reach the upper echelons of the organised crime syndicates. That's why we saw people clap in Palermo and why the state is triumphant - because the news feels like closure." "We now know Messina Denaro was being cured for cancer so is quite sick. Italian media reported that Messina Denaro was captured just before 10:00 (09:00 GMT) and taken to a secret location by the Carabinieri. The mafia boss also oversaw racketeering, illegal waste dumping, money-laundering and drug-trafficking for the powerful Cosa Nostra organised crime syndicate.

Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the bosses of the Cosa Nostra Mafia in Sicily and Italy's most wanted man, has been arrested by police while being treated in ...

A suspected sighting of him in September 2021 led to a manhunt and hundreds of tips, the prosecutor said. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tweeted: “A great victory for the state which demonstrates that it does not give up in the face of the Mafia.” “It is a victory for all the police forces that have worked together over these long years to bring the dangerous fugitive to justice,” Italy’s Chief of Police, Lamberto Giannini, said in a statement congratulating the Carabinieri – Italy’s military police – and the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Messina Denaro, the last of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses, was arrested in Palermo after 30 years on the run.

He was the last of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for decades eluded capture. Messina Denaro, who had a power base in the port city of Trapani, in western Sicily, was considered Sicily's Cosa Nostra top boss even while a fugitive. He is set to be imprisoned for are two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that murdered top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

When Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested, more than 100 members of the armed forces were involved and the crime boss was wearing a watch worth €35000.

He was immersed in the mafia lifestyle from a young age. It is the end of a myth and the organisation will have to cope with this," she said. He apparently played video games and entertained many girlfriends, according to the Washington Post. He was wearing a watch worth €35,000 (£31,000) at the time. The "last godfather" was one of Italy's most wanted fugitives. "Mafias are really not global," he said.

Sicilian mobster who boasted 'I filled a cemetery by myself' managed to stay hidden without going far from home.

Denaro was one of a gang who kept the boy chained up in various locations in western Sicily for two years to put pressure on his father to recant, before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid. “Today’s arrest is an important step forward, however, it would be a mistake to think that with today’s arrest the fight against the mafia is finished. “He became part of the Corleone group, but he was a very modern boss in some ways,” says Di Girolamo. It’s also important to find out how he was able to remain a fugitive from justice for 30 years, and who was protecting him. “Like the old mafiosi, he sees the mafia as a superior state, involving a select few who are worthy of the honour,” Teresa Principato, a former magistrate and a member of the Direzione Nationale Antimafia (DNA) who was on his trail for decades, said in 2014. “He was never the boss,” says Principato. [invited the wrath of the state](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/22/mafia-godfathers-sicily-palermo-italy) by assassinating two high-profile and widely admired anti-mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992. He didn’t need to build himself a bunker like the heads of the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria. “He was not married, but he had a child with his partner. A series of arrests of people close to him, including his sister Patrizia, raised hopes that the net was closing, but none of them would talk. Hundreds of police had been engaged in the search over the years with no success. Thirteen years later, his sidekick, living like an ascetic, eating cheese and chicory and reading his Bible in a shepherd’s hut near his birthplace, Corleone, was run to ground.

Italy's most wanted mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested by armed police at a private hospital in Sicily on Monday, where the man who has been on ...

In 1993 he helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say. He eventually died in jail in 2017, having never broken his code of silence. Messina Denaro, 60, was led away from Palermo's "La Maddalena" hospital by two uniformed carabinieri police and bundled into a waiting black minivan. "We have not won the war, we have not defeated the mafia but this battle was a key battle to win, and it is a heavy blow to organised crime," she said. A second man who had driven Messina Denaro to the hospital was arrested at the scene on suspicion of aiding a fugitive. Nicknamed "Diabolik" and "'U Siccu" (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro had been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, crimes that shocked the nation and sparked a crackdown on Cosa Nostra.

Messina Denaro is accused of being a ruthless assassin whose violence fuelled the bloody reputation of the Cosa Nostra Mafia. “With the people I have killed ...

“We have confirmation of his presence in Brasil, Spain, Britain, Austria,” she told Il Fatto Quotidiano daily at the time. He was once featured on an Italian magazine cover in dark glasses, looking like a rock star, but his list of victims is long and the crimes he is accused of are horrific. Falcone was murdered in a car bombing near Palermo on May 23, 1992. His first run-ins with the law began in 1989 when he took part in a bloody struggle between two clans. Unfortunately, the employee was Messina Denaro’s mistress. As head of the Castelvetrano clan, he was allied with the Corleonesi clan, which was immortalised in the The Godfather films.